


Fish Out of Water

by SheegothBait



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Actually T but a bit gory at times, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angela is a wonderful human being, Environmental issues, First Contact, Horrible secrets, I'll try not to be preachy, M/M, Man-eating merpeople, Medical Examination, Mer Jack, Mer Reyes, Moira is not actually an awful person this time, Moira is tired, Scientific Inaccuracies, Separation Anxiety, Traumatic situations, communication barriers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29162235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheegothBait/pseuds/SheegothBait
Summary: Jack and Gabriel have settled down in a comfortable tropic cove, ready to finally make a life for themselves. The problem is, food is starting to dry up, and they've had to take dangerous chances to survive, risking the exposure of the entire mer civilization.Above the waves, the nearby marine institute has taken notice and sent their top scientists to investigate. Angela Ziegler, marine biologist and scientific protege of Moira O'Deorain, has always dreamed of seeing mer up close. When the opportunity falls into her lap, though, she finds the best-kept secret in scientific history, and discovers the dark reason it has been kept hidden all these years.Humans and mer are about to collide.
Relationships: Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

Jack yawned and shifted on his bed of refined shell-sand, not wanting to open his eyes just yet even though soft, muted daylight was starting to filter through the cave. He reached out an arm to wrap around his mate but found himself groping at air. He opened his eyes, searching for Gabriel.

The mer-shark clung to the sharp rocks at the cave entrance, illuminated by sunshine. From his handsome face to his chiseled torso to his powerful barbed tail, he was the picture of perfection to Jack, a near-perfect specimen of his kind. Even the long white scars along his back from too-close encounters with fishing boats couldn’t dim his majesty.

A collection of hooks with brightly-colored streamers were caught in the cartilage of his dorsal fin, lines he’d been snagged on by accident and consequently broken. Jack had wanted to stop this plan of following human fishing boats for food, but fish were scarce elsewhere and the boats were a good indicator of where to find meals. Gabriel sometimes would lead Jack in the hunting of other creatures when the fish became scarce, but they had to be careful. Neither of them wanted to attract more human attention than necessary.

“What is it?” Jack asked, making his way to Gabriel with a small swish of his tail.

Gabriel grimaced. “Blood.” He sniffed. “Smells like fish.”

Jack could taste it now, thin and sharp. “But there aren’t any other mer in our territory, are there?”

“I don’t know. But something’s killing the fish.”

Jack sighed. “Probably the humans again.”

“They’re out of season. Something’s not right.” He launched himself from the cavern.

Jack followed with a few sweeps of his tail, careful not to graze himself on the barnacles lining the cave entrance. “Maybe it’s sharks.”

The mer-shark grinned darkly, baring his pointed teeth. “I haven’t had shark in a while.”

“Gabriel…”

“What? They’re intruding and I’m hungry.”

“We need to be careful. Twenty skeletons in a week isn’t a small number.”

“Those were dolphins. Sharks are different. We still have to eat, anyway.”

“We really should move. Someone’s going to _notice…_ ”

“Fine. _After_ today. But it’s the humans’ fault for over-fishing the area anyway.” Gabriel sped up. Jack followed, his long dorsal fin throwing off strings of small bubbles. His mate dropped back and rolled underneath him, idly watching him swim.

“Gods, you’re beautiful.”

Jack laughed. “You should see yourself sometime.”

“Heh. That’s sweet of you, but I’m not a beautiful mer, Jack. You don’t need to say I am to protect my vanity.”

“I’m just being honest.”

Gabriel looked away. “You’re too kind.”

“So what are we going to do about the sharks?”

“Well,” Gabriel said, rolling back over so his belly was to the sand, “If it’s a school, there won’t be much we can do. But if it’s a solitary shark, or just a few...well, same plan as before, I’d say.”

“Gotcha.” He sniffed at the water. “They smell close.”

They burst into the shallows and quickly hid themselves behind a thicket of coral.

“See anything?” Gabriel asked.

“No.” Jack swam out a short distance, peering into the shallows, past the sea-fans. The blood-smell was stronger than ever, but there weren’t any flickers of movement that indicated sharks were feeding. “I’m going to get closer.”

He glided cautiously over an underwater arch, rolling onto his belly briefly to peer at the surface. A indistinct shadow marred the crystal surface. Gabriel caught up with him.

“Still nothing?”

“There’s something on the surface. Can’t tell what it is.”

“I don’t taste fuel, so I don’t think it’s a boat. We should be safe.” With a flick of his tail, he moved into more open water. “Hey, there’s food out here.”

Jack joined Gabriel. Small dead fish floated like silver seaweed all around them. Gabriel snatched the nearest one and tore it in half with one bite.

“Aaah, ‘at’s be’er.” A tail wagged from Gabriel’s mouth, then vanished.

“Why would they leave food out here?” Jack asked, gathering a few of the fish and beginning to eat.

Gabriel raked his claws down a fish, filling the surrounding water with silver scales. “It doesn’t smell like humans, and they’re confusing anyway. They do things like this sometimes.”

Jack shrugged. He couldn’t argue with that or the enormous clouds of chum and offcast fish that sometimes billowed right past Gabriel and Jack’s cave. “Kinda weird it’s not fishing season though. They usually keep the fish.”

Gabrel shrugged. “Food is food. You complain too much.” He stuffed another fish whole into his mouth, then swam towards the surface, pointing upwards, where the cloud of dead fish was thicker.

Jack followed, catching a few stray fish along the way. His trepidation rose as the shadow loomed, whale-like, over them, apparently much larger than he’d guessed. He watched the black shadow out of the corner of his eye in case it attacked. They were getting closer to the thing, and he didn’t like it.

The perfume of fresh blood distracted him.

Gabriel was gorging on a larger fish nearby, and another had been dropped not far away. The smell was irresistible. Jack dropped his scaly meal and swam to the larger fish, tearing into it with his claws and ripping chunks off it. The water went pinky-red as he tore into the free meal with ravenous hunger, stripping the meat from the bones with teeth and claws alike.

Something brushed against his tail. He flicked it in irritation, felt it catch.

He shook off the feeding frenzy and tried to swim forward, away from the thing snagging his tail. He bumped into a barrier and swiped at it. his fingers caught, hooking around thick, tough strands almost invisible to his eyes.

_A net._

He tried to swim up and out, but the net had closed like a clam, sealing itself over his head, drawing slowly tighter. Gabriel’s net was even tighter than his, pressing against the mer-shark’s pale gray body, though he appeared not to notice. He had his whole head buried in the fish corpse, lost in the frenzy of feeding.

“Gabriel!”

Gabriel didn’t hear him.

“ _Gabriel!”_

Gabriel withdrew, blinking, from the corpse, and immediately looked down, tearing at the net. Jack flattened his fins as the net contracted, shrinking his room to maneuver.

“I told you it was a trap!” Jack bellowed.

“Shut up and swim down!” Gabriel shouted back, pressing against bottom of the net with all his strength. Jack tuned as best he could and began to beat his tail frantically against the water, ripping at the net with all his strength. His tail kept snagging. The net kept closing, ensnaring his dorsal fin, trapping his arms. Gabriel was biting furiously at the net fibers, but whatever the net was made of would not give even to the force of his mighty jaws.

The cold, searing touch of air burst along Jack’s back. Real panic exploded inside him. _He couldn’t survive in air!_ He thrashed furiously as the net drew him inexorably from the water.

“Gabriel!” He cried out. The mer-shark reached out for him, pressing against the netting.

“Jack, I’m s-“

Gabriel’s voice cut off. He could no longer hear his mate. He couldn’t even see his mate. The net cut into him as it carried him into the air, pressing his body into painful contortions. He wriggled helplessly, gasping for oxygen. His gills flapped uselessly. He caught a glimpse of brightly-clad humans running about on the deck of the ship. Some of them were carrying long spears.

He closed his eyes, choking on the suffocating lack of breathable water.

 _This is how I die_ , he thought.

A spear penetrated his side, cold spreading beneath his skin. He slipped into darkness.

*********************************************

He awoke in cold, stagnant, abyss-dark water. He breathed in. _I’m…not dead?_ It was so hard to think. His dorsal fin hurt. The last time he’d felt this poorly, he’d swum straight through a patch of anemones and Mother spent a week nursing him back to health. So he’d been poisoned. That had to be it. Nothing else could have made him feel this woozy and sore.

He breathed in. The water was stale and sharp, like the time he and Gabriel had taken a shortcut through a human shipwreck. Unnaturally still, tainted with heavy metals. He tried to move, but his body ached, and he felt something constricting his movements, pinning him in place.

He breathed in. The water tasted thinner, less salty than the ocean, like when Gabriel and he had taken up residence on a northern estuary for a short time. Food was plentiful there, but so were fishing boats, and Gabriel didn’t like the cold. Gabriel said that humans mostly thought merpeople were myths, and those that knew about them didn’t bother them. Why, then, had the humans fished them up like common tuna? Where were they?What was going on? He tried to call Gabriel’s name, but he could barely hear himself.

He breathed in. The cold penetrated him more deeply with each breath, snap-freezing his thoughts and numbing his body. He felt frozen and stiff. He thought longingly of the warm waters that could be leagues behind them. He felt a muffled, rhythmic thumping on the deck, heard shouting in a language he couldn’t make out. The thumping stopped.

He breathed in. Was it just him or did the water taste oddly contaminated all of the sudden, slightly sour, like pollution? Waves of sleep rolled over him. He didn’t want to think anymore. But cold was dangerous. Mother had told him so. Gabriel had told him so. _If you’re going through cold waters, you have to stay awake._

He was too tired.

He breathed out.

*********************

“Fascinating.”

Moira stared up at the huge tanks containing the two stunned merpeople. They were lying very still on the bottoms of their tanks, breathing slowly, recovering from the sedation and the ice-bath. In sleep they looked quite peaceful, almost harmless.

Moira knew better. Looks could be deceiving.

Supposedly the second, a dark-skinned part-shark with roughly-cut hair was correlated with several killings and disappearances. The numbers of assorted marine life in the area had taken a steep dive since these two had moved in, and the marine conservation program was eager to fix the problem. The Oasis Marine Research Institute had been dying to get their hands on live merpeople, as such a thing was a near-impossibility, and the conservation program had licensed these two for research purposes. Two birds, one stone.

Oasis had been following the mer-shark for quite some time, tracking his movements. The easily-identifiable hooks embedded in his dorsal fin made finding him simple, though it still took quite a while to figure out his patterns. He was occasionally seen with a sailfin mer, and Oasis had wanted to capture them both if possible. Probably if one was a man-eater, then so was the other. The mer-shark had done his very best to confuse those who tailed him with the intent to capture him and his mate, and for not the first time, she wondered how clever mer really were.

No matter. They were Oasis’s now, and even if they broke containment and escaped back into the water somehow, they’d both been tagged so that the institute could relocate them. Nothing short of tearing their own fins off would get rid of the tags. Answers to what mer really were capable of would come in time.

“Oh, _wow_ ,” a voice gasped behind her. Moira turned to see the youngest researcher on her team, barely out of school, standing behind her. Her ID read Angela Ziegler.

“You haven’t ever seen a mer, have you, Dr. Ziegler?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, we have _ideas_ of what they look like, and I’ve seen pictures, but-”

Moira beckoned imperiously. “Well, get closer. They won’t bite.”

Ziegler edged forward, staring, transfixed, at the captive mer.

“And Oasis can keep them?”

“Certainly. This one’s a bit of a trouble-maker,” She pointed at the mer-shark, “so they’ve both been licensed for research purposes.”

“But they live in pods, don’t they? What are they doing so far from their pod?”

“I see someone’s done their homework. But the pod hypothesis is just hypothesis. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some real answers once we begin studying them.”

“Why do they look half-human? What’s the evolutionary advantage?”

“They _look,_ “ Moira said stiffly, “like mer. Any similarities will be explained with _study_.”

“I’m just saying-“

“Exactly. And humans _used_ to say one could make bees by slaughtering a cow and leaving it to rot. You see my point?”

“Yes, Dr. O’Deorain,” Angela said, sounding mollified.

“You can guess away at scientific matters all you like. But unless you have solid enough evidence, speculation is only ever speculation.”

Angela was still looking at the mer, her gaze fixed on the half-shark. “He’s got fishing hooks in him. Do they still hurt him, you think?”

“I’m not sure. But they’ll need to be removed; we can’t do the scans otherwise.”

“How are we going to do that? We can’t exactly take them out of their tanks.”

“I’ll work on that. Now, unless you want to observe them, I suggest you go make yourself useful.”

Dr. Ziegler flung herself onto the floor and looked resolutely up at Moira, her tablet poised in her lap.

“Oh, very well. I want copies of any and all observations on my desk by shift change. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Angela tried and failed to suppress a grin.

Moira turned and walked off, sighing deeply. _Children._


	2. Chapter 2

Jack woke up, confused, groggy, cold, and aching. It was still daylight.

…Or was it?

The light shining through the water had an odd, dusk-yellow quality to it. But midday had passed hours ago…right? It should be night by now.

“Gabriel?” He called tentatively.

He tried to swim towards the light and ran into a barrier hard, almost breaking his nose. The unreachable sand beyond the barrier was a flat, steely gray, so very different from the cave’s white sand. He wheeled around. Gabriel was nowhere to be seen.

He swam in the other direction and rebounded off another barrier. Clutching his nose, he cursed and stuck out a hand, feeling his way along the enclosure. It was large, circular, taller than it was wide, and completely featureless other than a hole in the side and a large opaque section that blocked his surroundings from view.

“Gabriel!” He howled.

But he was alone.

Where was his mate? What had the humans done to Gabriel? What were the humans _planning_ to do to him? Maybe they ate merpeople now. He shivered and pushed the thought from his head. Humans were monsters. He wouldn’t put it past them, but he didn’t want to think about it much.

He investigated the tank. The hole led to a small, shallow chamber that he would have tremendous difficulty getting into and out of. No point going in there. Something moved beyond the barrier, and he looked around, spotting a thin, white splotch growing ever larger. It resolved into a human female with intensely red, very short hair and mismatched eyes. She peered at him sharply, then down at something in her hands, then back up at him. He watched her for a few minutes, then grew bored. He slapped his tail against the side of the chamber. The vibrations that echoed back like sonar made his teeth chatter. The woman was frowning at him now, still watching him, still working on something, either writing or drawing. She approached the barrier and put a hand to it. He paused and peered at her. Did she ever stop staring? He banged his tail against the wall again, just to anger her, and dragged his talons down the inside of the glass, baring his teeth. She stepped back and continued scribbling. Maybe she was writing nasty things about him, but he didn’t care. They’d taken his mate, and he wanted Gabriel back. He _needed_ Gabriel back.

He pounded on the barrier with a fist, grabbing the woman’s attention.

“Where is Gabriel?” He mouthed at her. The woman paused and watched.

“Where is Gabriel? I know you have him. Where is he?”

She said nothing, just blinked at him and continued her writing. He shoved off the wall and swam to the other side, drifting down near the tank bottom. _Useless._ He closed his eyes for a long moment. Anger and despair gripped him like an icy fist. Why couldn’t Gabriel have just left well enough alone? If he’d just ignored the bait, they’d both be fine.

He swished his tail, scowling, and opened his eyes. The white-coated woman was peering back at him. He snorted and rocketed upward, hovering near the top of the opaque wall. Something tugged unpleasantly at his dorsal fin as water streamed past him, and he stopped, twisting around to get a good look at it.

A tag pulled at the hard cartilage in the base of his fin, grating uncomfortably against the edges of the raw wound there. Small black lettering in a language he did not know spelled out words he could not read. He tried to reach it, but he could not. He glared down at the still-watching human. He didn’t know what the tag was for, but it couldn’t be for anything good.

He sulked, drifting for a while in the sluggish current until the woman left, then floated back to the bottom of the tank, curled his tail around himself, and leaned against the glass.

He’d been lonely before.

But never like this.

************************************************

“Dr. O’Deorain. How are the specimens?”

She looked sharply up from her notes. “Administrator,” she said, trying to stifle her surprise. “I…wasn’t expecting you until this afternoon.”

He gave her a small smile. “Perhaps you have lost track of time.”

She glanced down at the clock on her device and felt heat in her cheeks. “Ah…yes. My apologies.”

“It’s no trouble,” Mr. Ogundimu said comfortably. “I understand you’re busy with your new specimens.”

“Very much so, yes. Lots to do. The data we’ve collected on Subject #01-A suggests extraordinary, perhaps almost human, levels of intelligence already. He reacted to my presence, albeit with hostility, he pounded on the tank to get my attention and he made what I believe to be several attempts at communicating with me, he-“

“And Subject #01-B?”

“He’s very ill-tempered. He-“

“That’s not what I’m asking, Doctor,” Ogundimu said, lowering his voice. “Your report mentioned its fins had been punctured by rusty fishhooks and that it appeared to have been run over by several boats.”

“Well, yes, but-“

“Don’t you find it peculiar that it doesn’t show signs of infection?”

“Yes, but we need a safe way to remove the specimens from the tanks and examine them.”

“The ice bath technique used to bring them here doesn’t work?”

“It does, but I don’t think it’s wise to put them through that again so soon. Subject #01-A in particular took a long time to recover after that. It’s very hard on their bodies as there isn’t enough oxygen in the water to sustain them for a long journey. Besides, #01-B almost broke out on his way over here.”

“Very well. Take a week. Get a solution planned out. I want to see the results of their blood tests in two weeks’ time.”

She tried to keep a frown off her face. “Understood, Administrator.”

He gave her a short bow. “I’ll leave you to it. Good day, Doctor.”

**********************************************

Gabriel was losing his mind.

He swam yet another lap of his tank, his mind firmly stuck on Jack’s whereabouts. Was his mate okay? Was he locked in a featureless tank too, his fin pierced with a tag? Was he being butchered by the humans? He didn’t know, and it was driving him crazy, even more crazy than the little plastic tag on his dorsal fin, even more crazy than the white-coated humans that came and sat and watched him work himself into a frenzy.

This was his fault. If he’d just paid attention to the warning signs and listened to Jack, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

_You know this goes back further than that, though,_ a small voice murmured in his head.

_Shut up,_ he told it. _It’s the humans’ fault, chasing away our fish. If they hadn’t run our food out of town, I wouldn’t have needed to do what I did. I was hungry. That’s that._

_And now Jack’s probably dead,_ said the small, truthful voice.

He lashed his tail against the tank wall. _Shut it. I know. I can’t go back and fix it, so stop bothering me._ He stopped swimming and drifted to the bottom of the tank, closing his eyes. He was furious, both with the humans and with himself. But more than that, he was tired. He hadn’t eaten for several days now; the humans might have put something into the fish just like they’d put something into that freezing, claustrophobic enclosure to stun him for transport. He wouldn’t know why this would be the case (he was already trapped, after all) but better safe than sorry. He hadn’t even slept. The light stayed dusk for much longer than a normal day, and he found it extremely difficult to sleep by the light. He suspected that this would be the case even if thoughts of Jack weren’t running through his head. Images of Jack, trapped and struggling in the net, kept flashing behind his eyes. He willed them away, trembling with grief and fatigue, and they slowly sank into dreams.

_He was cruising over white sand, through pure water, laughing. Jack appeared beside him, his long, elegant fin throwing off streams of bubbles like strings of pearls, his electric blue fins complementing his gold hair and markings. A mass of silver flashed up ahead. Jack caught his eye, and the two of them darted forward, through the cloud of flickering fish. They dove and darted, laughing and snatching at prey. Gabriel burst from the cloud into suddenly dark waters, looking around for his mate. Jack was gone._

_He called out for his mate, but the water was red and thick and he couldn’t see. Something stabbed into his side. He snarled and flailed, the smell of blood all around him. He howled for his mate._

_Jack! **Jack!**_

He snapped awake, swatting at his surroundings with his tail and hitting something. He uncoiled and peered at it, feeling strangely groggy. A small plume of his blood spun through the water from the spot the thing had most recently occupied. It was bright silver and oblong and slightly fish-looking, but its front end looked more like a sea urchin. The not-fish drifted slowly to the bottom of the tank, and as he watched it fall, his eyelids became heavy.

By the time two divers entered his enclosure, pulling a weighted net behind them, he was profoundly asleep.

He stirred.

He lay upon what seemed to be a slab of rock, but he could feel the biting dryness of air against his skin. Round, sticky patches, like overlarge barnacles, clung to his skin. He took a surprisingly easy breath. A slick mystery substance covered his gills. Something stung his tail like a broken sea urchin spine. He flicked his tail in irritation, but the motion was half-hearted. He felt sleepy and weak.

The hooks in his tail jerked, like someone had grabbed hold of them and was pulling on them. He opened his eyes, casting a baleful glare down his belly, stuck with round white patches that trailed colorful threads. His gills flared, gasping, as alarm shot through him.

He was out of water entirely. And surrounded by humans.

He lay upon a table-like slab, bound to it with thick, flat ropes. The white-clothed humans were milling around him, chattering to each other in their thin and painfully high-pitched voices. One was holding his tail flat, keeping an eye on a thing that stung his tail. One was bent over his side, keeping a close watch on a tablet in his lap. And two were inspecting his dorsal spines, prodding at the fishing hooks embedded in his fins.

The one with the tablet suddenly looked up and let out a cry that stabbed at Gabriel’s ears.

Pandemonium ensued as the humans scattered.

The redheaded one lunged at the counters surrounding the table he was strapped to while the blond female shrank back, twittering into her hand. He smacked his tail on the table, jerking it free and clipping the dark-haired woman under the chin. She fell backward, stunned. Blood oozed from his tail and sprayed the humans in fine droplets as he struggled, trying to free himself. He gave the strap around his left wrist a mighty yank, and it snapped. His talons cut into his own skin as he scrabbled at the strap on his right wrist, his vision narrowing to his right arm and its immediate surroundings as he gasped for air.

One, two, three pairs of hands caught his left arm and wrestled him back against the table. He writhed, snapping his jaws at these new assaulters, who, it seemed, were using all their combined strength to hold him. They kept shouting in their piercing voices at each other, making Gabriel wince at the sheer volume of noise.

Something lanced Gabriel’s pinned right arm.

The redhead was bent over him, a sharp object jabbed into his arm. Their eyes met as she pressed down on the thing in her hand. Cold flooded his body, racing almost instantaneously up into his shoulder. He gave one more mighty jerk, then felt suddenly weak and slumped back against the table, the humans still pushing at him. She straightened and smoothed her hair, watching him imperiously. His vision tunneled and faded.

His last conscious thought was of Jack.

******************************************

Moira cast the used syringe aside and turned to her scattered coworkers.

“Dr. Zhou, are you quite all right?”

“I-I think so,” she said breathlessly, rubbing her chin. She settled her glasses back onto her face and peered at the mer with concern. “Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Moira said dismissively. “He’s just sedated.” She turned to Harold Winston, who was supposed to be monitoring the subject’s vitals. The man was shaking and pale, stricken with shock. “What happened?” She snapped.

“I don’t know. One minute he was soundly asleep, the next he went berserk.”

“Winston, Zhou, take five and pull yourselves together. Rober, Lynche…” The two security guards looked up at her, “we’ll let you know if we need more help. Ziegler,” she waved over her young protégé, “come here.”

“Is this safe?” Ziegler asked, her voice quavering slightly in the relative quiet. Moira was more focused on the mer’s now-labored gasps.

“Of course it’s safe. The sedation is not going to wear off _that_ quickly.” She pressed a jar into Ziegler’s hands. “Give his gills another coat of this. It will ease his breathing.”

Zeigler went to the task without complaint. “As I was saying about the hooks in his fins…I mean, some of them look to be…well, really old. I’d say at least eighty years. We don’t use hooks like that for fishing anymore. I wish I had a precise date on them.”

Moira picked up the pad Dr. Winston had abandoned. The mer’s vitals were stable again.

“How old do you suppose he is?”

“I can’t say for certain.” Moira grabbed the first-aid kit and began to clean the mer’s wounds.

“It’s strange,” Angela murmured, peering at the unconscious mer-shark. “His upper half looks human except for his teeth.”

“I suspect we’ll find other small differences as we study these two. They’ve adapted over generations for ocean living. I’m frankly baffled they evolved any sort of human form. It’s not exactly an evolutionary advantage in the water…” She trailed off, thinking over it as she disinfected some of his self-inflicted scratches. “He’s surprisingly strong, even for his size. We’ll have to fix the table so we can get 01-A in here.”

“Maybe if I could get more time with 01-A I could convince him to cooperate better.” Ziegler put the jar down.

“There will be time for that later. Right now we need samples to study. Understanding their intelligence is a lesser priority than gathering biological data. Your drawings and observations are proving very useful for that so far.”

Her protégé went pink in the cheeks. “Thank you.” She paused. “But we _will_ make some attempt to communicate, won’t we?”

“At a later date. Here, put this around his neck. ”

Angela took the thick collar. “What’s it for?” She asked, eyeing the device suspiciously.

“So we can tranquilize him remotely. None of our divers will have to enter his enclosure, and we won’t have to spend money on drones.”

“You know, we don’t have to do this to them,” Angela said glumly.

“You know as well as I do that unless we can control it, the Institute won’t keep a man-eater alive.”

Angela fastened the collar around the mer’s throat, then turned. “I think I’m going to take an early lunch.”

Moira sighed as Angela strode out of the room. She was such an idealist. Someday, that idealism would get her into deep trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hi, Angela!” Mei smiled at her, waving her over.

Angela sat down, not paying her much attention. She’d deliberated so long in the lunch line that people had started to get mad at her, her thoughts lost in the sad fate of the captive mer. Eventually she just grabbed something vegetarian at random to stop people from glaring.

Mei’s expression fell. “What’s the matter?”

Angela glanced at the far table where O’Deorain sat alone. “Do you realize,” she said in a hushed voice, “that both those mer are dead once this project is over?”

Mei stopped stirring her soup and looked up at her. Harold, however, seemed preoccupied with his ham-and-cheese.

“You knew?” Angela hissed at him.

Dr. Winston finally abandoned his lunch. “Well, Oasis’ policy on dealing with man-eaters is pretty clear. I don’t honestly see how it could have come as a shock to either of you.”

Angela dropped her fork. “Harold, mer are _really_ rare! I thought they’d lift the policy, especially since this pair of mer is only the second time they’ve _ever_ been studied in any significant capacity!”

Harold grimaced. “Look, I’m not saying I support the policy, but I can understand not wanting to release creatures that have gotten a taste for people. _I_ don’t feel like being torn apart by a half-shark just because I fancied a swim. Do you?”

“But they’re _smart,_ Harold! Easily smarter than a dog! We can’t just _kill_ them without trying to communicate with them!”

Harold’s eyes flashed. “And yet, if mer are as intelligent as you think they are, 01-B chose to attack and eat several people. If we set it loose, maybe it’ll go and teach the rest of its school that humans are tasty meat-snacks. Do you want to take that chance, Dr. Ziegler? Would it help soothe your conscience?”

“You know what? I’m not hungry.” She slammed down her utensils, snatched up her bag, and stormed out of the cafeteria. Her feet carried her automatically to the blond mer’s tank. She stared up at the sailfin mer with blurred vision. He lifted his head to look at her, watching her for a moment before settling back down. He’d been lying on the bottom of his tank for a while now, apparently quite as depressed about this situation as she now was.

She pulled her list of communication solutions up and looked forlornly at it. All the ideas were crossed off except one, and she knew the funding just didn’t exist for it right now. If only she could mic the tanks, like other institutes had done with dolphins in the past, and try to get him talking. She didn’t know if he could speak or understand English, or even if the mer would communicate on the same frequencies as a human would, but it was worth a try. Mer intelligence had been brushed off before, but the interactions she’d had with the two thus far had heavily implied that their sapience was greatly underestimated.

_I’m going to help you if I can,_ she thought, looking up at the captive mer. _I promise._

“Dr. Ziegler.”

She whipped around.

“Oh. Dr. O’Deorain.”

The head researcher stopped beside her, her thin, pale face calm. “I overheard your outburst.”

She let out a choked laugh. “I wasn’t very good at hiding it.”

“Yes, well, you may want to control your feelings a bit better. I understand why you’re upset, but it’s our job to push into some uncomfortable territory sometimes. I promise you I’ll take full blame for anything regrettable that I make you do.” She gave Angela a small, slightly sarcastic grin.

Angela did not return the smile. “I don’t want anything to do with hurting them.”

“We won’t hurt them.”

“You _are!_ ” Angela shouted, her voice reverberating off the walls. “ _Look_ at him!” She gestured at the blond mer. “He’s depressed! Not even octopi get like that after just a few days! Something’s wrong with him, and I will bet you my next paycheck that it has something to do with the fact that we’re underestimating their intelligence and that we’ve separated him from his mate! How can we justify killing him when he’s as smart as we are?”

Moira gave her a sidelong look. “And are you certain they’re as smart as you say they are? Do you have proof?”

Angela stamped a foot. “I’ve logged more time observing them than the rest of this damn facility put together! Did you actually read any of the notes I gave you on the way he inspects his food before he eats it, or the way he’s so quick to investigate any disturbance in his surroundings, or the way he draws on the side of his tank with his nails when he’s bored?”

Dr. O’Deorain pinched her nose. “Angela,” she said slowly, apparently thinking hard about what she was going to say next, “I haven’t read your notes, and I’m sorry, but I’ve been extremely busy. I do want to find out if these mer are as smart as you say; they’re clearly highly intelligent. But underwater mics are just the tip of the iceberg as far as research expenses go in that field. We’d have to devote rooms and servers to making and storing the recordings and staff to listening and attempting to translate the recordings. It would be a tremendous, exorbitant undertaking of not weeks, but months. Possibly years. ”

“When has that ever stopped us? And why have you been so busy you can’t look at my behavioral notes on the mer?”

Dr. O’Deorain stared unseeingly at the captive sailfin. “Our investors want something that can help humankind directly. We’ve always prided ourselves on being able to provide that sort of data.” She tucked her hands into her pants pockets. “I know mer are rare, and I don’t want to kill them any more than you do. I’m scrambling for data that will help me continue the research on mer so that I can keep them alive and safe. Otherwise, our funding will be cut on this project and we’ll have to move on.” She sighed. “I think I’ve found something of use, but I need my support staff to help me so I can help them.” She glanced at the tank. “And maybe if we’re lucky, if you work overtime, we can perhaps squeeze in some time for communication research.”

“Right! We should t least try; I mean, look at him. He’s obviously listening.”

Dr. O’Deorain glanced at the mer. He was staring at the pair of them.

“I have ideas,” Angela pressed. “I want to try them, but I just need a _chance_ to!”

Moira favored her with a genuine smile. “I know you have ideas, and I’d love to hear them. You’re a bright young woman, and bright young people like you are full of ideas. We’ll have to see if we can make any of them cost-effective though, hm?” Her hand squeezed Angela’s shoulder briefly, then she turned and left.

Angela stood very still in front of the sailfin’s tank, peering at him. He looked back at her, his long dorsal fin half-spread, his blue eyes brighter than she’d seen them in the past few days. She put a hand to the glass.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “I’m going to help you. I _have_ to. Just hang in there.”

*****************************************************************

The blond human came back again and again.

She watched him swim laps around his tank, scribbling the occasional note. Probably observing how he was reacting to the changes in his environment. Even if he did speak human, though, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to tell her what he thought about them.

The new day-night cycle was a pleasant change; it meant he could finally sleep. The food was the only thing good, really, about imprisonment. He could eat his fill , and he didn’t even have to catch and kill the fish first. About a week had passed before he grew hungry enough to eat anything the humans gave him, but when he ate, he found nothing whatsoever wrong with the fish they provided.

The collar, however, soured things. He’d been pounced on by some human creation, neither alive nor inanimate, stung in the side, and passed out. When he woke up, he was wearing the stupid collar. It fit tight around his neck, and the material it was made of refused to give under his relentless picking and tearing at it. So far it was inert, neither harming nor helping him. He hoped he wouldn’t wake up with more human devices stuck on him.

His loneliness waxed and waned.

He guessed it was close to two weeks that he’d been here, but it was hard to tell. He’d started to pick up on the differing behaviors of the humans assigned to watch him. The redheaded woman was cool and distant, observing him like a particularly curious bit of zooplankton. She never stayed long, but her searching gaze gave him the chills. He hugged the tank bottom and curled up when she came, willing her away. The man with rectangular markings around his eyes didn’t seem to like him much. He was skittish in Jack’s vicinity. Jack found it entertaining to make him jump, either by charging the glass or by slamming his tail into the wall. The dark-haired woman was…fine, he supposed. She often carried around a steaming container in different bright colors and sat on the floor and tapped her fingers against her chin thoughtfully while she watched him. He wondered if the dangly thing she wore in her hair would be any fun to play with. She at least didn’t make him shiver.

The blond human was his favorite, and he’d gone from simply ignoring her like the other two women to cautiously engaging with her. She made a funny motion with her hand when she approached the tank and left, like she was trying to swim through the air with one hand. Mimicking her made her smile, so he returned the gesture. Once she brought a little light with him, and it amused him to chase it up and down the opaque wall of his tank. Another time he’d heard her feet, tapping quietly along the rim of his tank late at night, and she’d dropped him an extra fish.

But then she would leave, and his thoughts would turn to his mate.

He had to shove these thoughts from his mind when he had them. Dwelling on Gabriel was a very dangerous thing. The act of convincing himself he would see Gabriel again only ate at him, stirring unnecessary hope. If the humans had separated them, he didn’t see why they’d let them see each other again. _He’s gone_ , he told himself. _He’s gone, and that’s that._ It was depressing, but probably the truth, and better than clinging onto false hope anyway.

He missed Gabriel, though.

He missed waking up to find his mate next to him in his soft white-sand bed, he missed his gravelly laughter as they chased fish and indulged in the thrill of the hunt, he missed lazy summer mornings and basking in some sheltered, warm, difficult-to-reach cove devoid of humans. The blond human made life in the tank not terrible, but he missed the freedom to _move_.

He sank slowly deeper into his own black thoughts, and the small amount of enjoyment he found in playing with the blond vanished as quickly as it had come. He lay, morose, on the bottom of the tank, watching the blond trying and failing to engage him.

The redhead appeared one day, the collar suddenly stung him. He lost time and came to back in his tank, but seemed to remember long fingers stroking along his dorsal fin and brushing through his hair. The touch had been a gentle one, and he had to wonder what it meant.

He hoped it was something good.

************************************************

“Dr. O’Deorain? You wanted to see me?”

“Actually, yes. Come in. And close the door.”

Ziegler shut the door with a snap and sat down. Her gaze darted around the dark, cluttered office, from the stacks of paper to the megalodon tooth collection to the enormous opalized ammonite and finally to the resin-encased fish skeleton that acted as Moira’s paperweight. She fought to keep her face straight as her protégé quickly glanced away from this somewhat grisly ornament. Ziegler’s gaze refocused on the ammonite and stayed there. Moira got the impression the young woman was avoiding her gaze.

“Dr. Ziegler?”

Angela focused on her shoes. “If this is about my interactions with the mer, I am doing my best to try to get them to say something so we can get it on record. I see nothing wrong with it,” she said in a rush, her voice hard and defensive.

“Be that as it may. We’re getting plenty of other data from your interactions as well. Dr. Zhou and Dr. Winston have both been instructed to try to engage the mer in similar fashion.”

Ziegler looked up.

“I think we may find positive contact useful in our continued work with them. 01-B is far more stubborn than 01-A, but I’m hoping we can soften his hard edges a little with time.”

“Dr. Winston doesn’t seem to like this post very much.”

“You concern is noted. He and I have talked about this before. If you would like details, you’d best speak with him about it. But he is not the subject of this meeting.”

“You like the way I interact with the mer.”

“I do.”

“But it won’t count for much, will it?” Angela asked, her voice a little bitter. “I mean, how much longer do we have with them?”

A pregnant pause stretched between them. Moira settled herself into her armchair and steepled her fingers.

“Two months.”

Angela sat up as though electrified. “You got more time?”

“I did. It so happens that 01-A and 01-B’s blood contains a strange protein marker that I suspect may be responsible for stagnating the aging process. I’ll need to have a closer look at it before I can say with greater certainty, but I feel comfortable enough in my observations to publish a hypothesis on it.”

Across the desk, Angela was trying not to explode with excitement. “That means you’ll let me run my attempts to communicate with them, right?”

Moira hesitated. “…On a much smaller scale, yes. But,” she lifted a finger, “I will need additional help with running more in-depth examinations on them. I’d like to remove and date the hooks in 01-B’s tail and dorsal fin, for starters. It will help us determine his age.”

“Yes, of course!”

“And I’ll want additional blood samples from them. Dr. Zhou took a relatively small amount; I wasn’t sure how much they could handle.”

“When can they interact with each other?”

“Interact with…?” Moira blinked. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

Angela seemed to deflate “Why not? They’re depressed, especially Blue!”

Moira stared at her. “Blue?”

“01-A, I mean. I call him Blue; it’s annoying to keep referring to him by alphanumeric code.” Ziegler waved the comment away. “But the information packet kept suggesting they were mates. If they’re remotely intelligent, they’ll be missing each other.”

“Or perhaps their proximity to one another is just a happy coincidence. Mer are extremely territorial; those stories of merpeople killing each other aren’t just the ravings of a fisherman who had a little too much sun. I won’t have them killing each other before their time is up.”

“Surely there’s something we can do-“

Moira cut her off. “I’ll leave you up to that. You’re my ideas person. Dismissed.”

Angela got up, looking distinctly rumpled, and turned to go.

“Oh, and Angela?”

The young scientist looked back.

“Do try not to get too attached. I know you’re fond of 01-A, but his time is short, and so is ours. Make the most of it.”

Ziegler ducked her head sullenly and left. Moira sighed and slumped in her chair. The optimistic youngster was right. The two mer were mates, or at least all the evidence pointed that way. But if the researchers didn’t see the two mer interacting, it would be simpler to bring the project to an end when it inevitably came, and she didn’t want her best and brightest resigning in protest. The “angel investors” had made it quite clear that she wasn’t to sink too much money into the project with the mer, unless she found something really useful, and try to wrap it up relatively quickly. She would take funding from somewhere else if she didn’t think the entire facility and all its useful programs would collapse around her ears once the investors withdrew. She had her sneaking suspicions they were concealing something, but her hands were tied as far as dealing with the situation went, or the investors would withdraw their support and break her.

She was counting on Angela to get to the bottom of this.


	4. Chapter 4

It was eerie, Angela thought, watching the huge, powerful mer-shark lie so very still and quiet while Moira bent over his tail with a cutting laser. She half-expected him to wake up and start struggling at any moment, but Dr. O’Deorain had made sure that he wouldn’t come to this time. The ketamine dosage dripping its way into his system was set high enough to knock out a horse. Performing even this minor procedure on him felt strange, because, with his body segmented by surgical draping, she was only able to see either the human or the fish physiology depending on where she stood. It was easy to forget he was neither all fish nor all man, but some peculiar amalgam that played by its own set of rules.

Her thoughts drifted. The fundamentals of mer survival and evolution were so much different that both Blue and Jaws had grown shark teeth instead of the dental set that she might expect of something that looked so convincingly human. How much different, then, were mer societal structures, communication habits, and higher functions? Was it even possible to communicate with them?

“Dr. Ziegler.”

O’Deorain was holding a rusty hook between a pair of forceps. Knots of scar tissue clung to the old fishing implement, so intertwined it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Angela held out the surgical tray and caught the grisly thing.

“Why do you suppose his mate didn’t try to pull them out?” She asked in a hushed voice.

“ _Think_ , Ziegler. And pay attention. We’re almost done; I trust you can manage not to get distracted for another fifteen minutes,” Moira snapped, adjusting her protective goggles and leaning down again.

Angela frowned at her boss and glanced over the collection of hooks in various stages of corrosion. Most were fairly large, not from the average lakeshore fisher who dabbled in the sport, and still wickedly barbed despite their age. She winced as she thought how it might feel to attempt to pull one out of her skin, and the scarring around a few of them certainly indicated that he’d tried. No wonder he’d left them in. The smaller ones were newer, not meant to hold much more than a salmon. Maybe he just liked collecting them at that point, or maybe he liked breaking fishermen’s lines and frustrating them.

_Or maybe,_ said a nasty voice, _some of these are broken lines from the people he ate._

An image popped, unbidden, into her head: a frightened person, clinging to a fishing pole, being dragged deep into black, churning waters, and those teeth suddenly looming out of the dark... She shivered and pushed the thought out of her head, glancing down at the anesthetized mer. Dr. O’Deorain was constantly warning her not to get too friendly with the mer. Maybe her mentor was just trying to protect her.

Blue’s face swam through her thoughts, watching her attentively with those vivid, intelligent eyes. She could definitely see Jaws as a maneater, both in his appearance and in his standoffish and even aggressive behavior, but something about Blue just didn’t fit with the suggestion that he’d killed humans. He seemed to enjoy playing with her, and he wasn’t openly aggressive even when he had every right to be upset. He acted far too friendly with her for her ever to consider that he wanted to eat her.

She was sure he had stories to tell, if only she could find a way to talk to him.

_“Ziegler!”_

She jumped.

******************************

“Ninety-eight years.”

Angela stared at Harold, baffled. “What?”

“This hook is ninety-eight years old, or at least that’s my best educated guess.” He picked the object with up a gloved hand and turned it int the light, peering curiously at it.

“But he- 01-B, I mean- _looks_ like he’s thirty-five! How can that be?”

“I don’t know. If Dr. O’Deorain has his blood results back, it might help explain things.”

“She does, but she hasn’t found anything conclusive quite yet. I mean, she has her suspicions, but…”

“And she hasn’t told you?”

Angela started. “Not anything substantial. Why?”

Harold turned his attention back to the hooks. “Well, she always comes to you first if she needs ideas, doesn’t she? I assume if she found anything that she wanted to share, you’d be the first to know,” he said, his tone deliberately nonchalant.

Angela recoiled slightly, stung. So what if Moira liked her? The head scientist had run her ragged since she’d joined Moira’s team. According to Mei, few people had lasted as long as Angela did, and not even Harold, dedicated as he was to his work, had received as much positive attention from Moira. She just happened to have a lot of ideas that Dr. O’Deorain found useful.

“Look, Harold. I know you work hard. But I didn’t choose to have Dr. O’Deorain like me.”

“Maybe not,” he responded coolly, his attention still on the hooks, “but you could still give the rest of us a shot once in a while.”

She huffed in frustration and turned away, biting her tongue on the nasty retort. A new photo resting on Harold’s workspace caught her attention. Tall, thin Harold, sans glasses, smiled sheepishly and slightly awkwardly from under the crushing grip of a stocky, tan body-builder-esque man. The unknown occupant wore a huge smile and clutched a garish surfboard in his other hand. They were both in swimming trunks, backed against white sand and turquoise waves. Someone had drawn a small heart on the corner of the photo.

“Who’s this?”

Harold flushed, dropped the tray of fishhooks, and hastily pulled the photo down, stuffing it in a desk drawer. “Friend of mine,” he said shortly, not looking at her.

She dropped the subject. This must have been why Harold left for several weeks. He’d been out grieving the loss of a family member a year ago, and since then he’d curiously stopped participating in any project involving sharks. She wondered why he was involved with this project. Had Dr. O’Deorain told him that “Jaws” was a maneater? Maybe he did know the details, but it wouldn’t surprise her if Moira had pressured him into being involved with the mer or given him reassurances that he would never have direct contact with the mer-shark. She _had_ wanted her best minds on the project, and Harold definitely counted.

“Here. Dr. O’Deorain is trying to talk to you.” He snatched up Angela’s tablet and shoved it into her hands. She looked down.

_01-A has been removed from his tank for research purposes. Come up to the holding tanks and help install the microphone in 01-A’s enclosure._

She glanced up at Harold.

“I…I should go. Thanks for your help, though. I appreciate it. I’m sure Dr. O’Deorain will be very interested in your analyses. ”

Harold said nothing.

**********************

Angela took another pull at her tepid coffee and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then adjusted her headphones and wound back the recording. Blue had investigated the microphone briefly when he’d first woken up, but he’d definitely been sulky and bad-tempered when she’d tried to speak to him, outright ignoring her by the end of the attempt. She couldn’t blame him. She would hate being in his position; isolated and unable to communicate with anyone, unpleasant thoughts spinning through and through and through his mind as the solitude and boredom took its toll, being drugged repeatedly and fearing what happened when he was unconscious. He’d torn up his neck trying to get the collar off, so it must be distressing him. She’d noticed he had the shivers sometimes when he woke up and knew it had nothing to do with the tropic temperature of his enclosure.

Poor Blue.

But he had to talk. She _needed_ him to talk. She _knew_ he was smart. She’d spent more time with him than everyone else combined, but it was that argument she needed to prove beyond a doubt to anyone else. Maybe then they could speak for themselves and the researchers would listen. If they were as smart as she thought, there had to be a _reason_ for them to have attacked those people. She had to stop the ticking clock on the mer, or the researchers risked killing sentient creatures without ever understanding them. Who were they to place blame on the mer before they knew the full story?

She twiddled one of the dials on her playback mechanism a little, frowning. He’d spoken at least a few words to her, though she was quite sure he hadn’t said anything very nice. She had attempted to translate that into soundwaves interpretable by the human ear and brain, trying the wavelengths closest to human hearing first, then advancing painstakingly along the range of audible frequencies when that attempt failed. If she could just figure out what _frequency_ they communicated at, she could make a stab at translating what they were saying and get a linguist in to help decipher their speech patterns. And she was _sure_ they could talk.

At least, that’s what she’d originally thought.

She ticked through another handful of frequencies, the numbers on her watch slowly turning over as time passed. She thought she heard something a couple of times and paused, listening intently. But it was nothing conclusive, so she bookmarked it in irritation and moved on. At 3:14 she slouched into the kitchen and got another cup of room-temperature coffee and resumed her station, drinking it without tasting and slowly drifting deeper into a stupor despite the caffeine flooding her system.

“…are you doing this? I don’t understand what we’ve done wrong.”

Her mug went flying as she sat bolt upright, spilling the remains of her stone-cold coffee across her desk. Her unattended notepad slowly soaked up the drink, brown stains making the ink run. She paid it no attention, pressing the headphones to her ears.

“I don’t suppose you’re even going to tell me what this is about.”

The voice, clearly masculine, belonged to none of the researchers that were working with the mer. The microphone wasn’t picking up other voices, so this had to be one of the captive mer.

“Fine. _Don’t_ tell me. Worthless no-scales…”

_No -scales._

It felt odd to be excited about what was probably an insult, but no human she knew spoke like that. She tossed the headphones aside, whipped out her phone, and called her boss, her heart pounding in her throat. On the fourth ring, Moira picked up.

_“Do you have any idea what time it is?”_ The head scientist groused, her voice thick and cranky.

Angela worried her lip with her teeth. Moira didn’t like interruptions at the best of times. “I wouldn’t bother you unless it was important.”

_“I suppose you’re connecting Points A and C again without first passing through B._ ”

“Just listen to me, please. I-I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think I’ve found solid proof mer can talk.”

There was a solid sixty seconds of silence. Angela’s heart seemed to drop into her shoes as she waited…waited…waited for an answer.

_“I’ll be there shortly.”_


End file.
